Tuesday, June 25, 2013

A LITTLE INSANITY GOES A LONG WAY TOWARDS HAPPINESS!

﻿

I got my first
taste of collecting, when my wife began dragging home a few old rusty kitchen
gadgets that she had acquired at the local flea market.I was amused, but not surprised, since during
the 1980's, everyone seemed to be gleefully riding along on the antiques
decorating bandwagon. I was also not surprised that she had chosen kitchen
collectibles to take her first collecting baby steps. The fact that she had
been appointed the families chief cook and bottle washer, and was attending to
the feeding of our three kids, their menagerie of friends, and a hungry
husband, meant she was spending an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen.

Kitchens are
after all, the axis of our daily lives. It's inevitable, that when you visit family or
friends, eventually you end up plopping down in the kitchen.It's no surprise then, that kitchen antiques
are among the most popular collectibles.Nevertheless, be careful; collecting these shiny little decorative
objects can become just a tad obsessive.

Curiouser and
cuiouser. The hunt for kitchen collectibles has a way of turning us
into amateur sleuths and anthropologists. "Have you ever seen one of
those?", “what do you think that was for?”, "is that plastic or
Bakelite?". As I moseyed along the path into the wonderland of kitchen
collectibles, no one warned me to keep an eye out for the rabbit.It wasn't long before I found my life had
become increasingly populated with whatzit’s and thingamajigs, with each new
discovery providing more questions than answers. The search for some new gadget
was occupying more & more time. If I had only known that with every new acquisition,
I was edging myself closer to the rabbit hole.

Before I knew it,
I found myself spending every weekend at estate sales, peeking into dreary,
greasy little kitchen drawers, discovering within each cubbyhole a cacophony of
gadgetry as exotic as the artifacts extracted from King Tut’s tomb.It was as exciting as examining a time
capsule, "Who made this thing?" "Ooh, What’s that?",
"Is it patented?, where's the number? Where's the date?". Is there
hidden meaning surrounding the difference between red and green handled kitchen
tools? What are these white handled doohickeys?Who's watching me?I gotta get
this stuff. Where’s a box.

I didn't even
think about the old lady I had pushed aside trying to be first in the
door.leaving, I found her still
crumbled up in a pile by the porch, I lithely stepped over her; the next sale
was miles away, and it's almost 9:00.I
was no longer at the edge of the hole, I was having tea with Alice.

I had to face
it.I had become an ECKO junkie. Most of
my free time was now spent franticly searching yard sales, flea markets, and
antiques shops & shows in search of my next kitchen utensil fix. I had also
come to recognize that the task would be far greater than I had first thought.
I was living in a world containing an endless variety of vintage eggbeaters,
can openers, fruit bottles and alluring chrome gadgets. I cringed. There were
probably kitchen gadgets I didn't even know about. On cue, the heavens opened
and the truth revealed itself; what I needed was a research library.

God I love this
book. 300 years of kitchen collectibles, 644 pages, the bible of kitchen
wizardry. I locked myself in the bathroom for 3 days, and emerged an expert on
can openers and corkscrews. My crusade was obvious. Get one of each.

It's getting hard
to sleep the night before an antiques show, the anticipation is brutal. It
keeps my stomach churning like a lump of butterfat in a 2 quart Daisy. I might
as well get up.Since I can't sleep, or
get into the show before ten, so it only makes sense to hit a few yard sales on
the way.

This is a
catastrophe. This is bull#$*%, I should have past that last sale, all I got
anyway was a crappy old Becker's church key. Now here I am, stuck in the back
of the line, and all the best stuff will be gone before I even get through the
door.Geeez, that guy is coming out with
the sweetest little pie bird you ever saw. I should have stayed in bed.Note to self; start setting your alarm for
5:00 am on Saturdays.

Time passed, and
I became an advanced collector. My library hadexpanded, and I had wisely read all of the
price guides. Unfortunately, I had begun to perceive my can opener collection
to be my biggest asset, and the core of my retirement plans. My IRA could now
be seen sitting on shelves, and dangling from nails on the kitchen walls,
giving the place a kind of surrealistic Christmas tinsel look. Kitchen gadgets
now completely dominated my life. To celebrate 20 years, I gave my wife an old
A&J beater for ouranniversary."Come on now,
it’s a hard one to find".

As she put her
stuff in the moving van, all I could think about is how many shelves I could
fit into her sewing room.

I’ve worn the
same underwear, and there hasn’t been dinner on the table for 5 days. Turns out
I do miss the wife, but she'll never take me back unless I give up my
collection.I begin to wonder if there's a
twelve-step program for this.

I was Encouraged,
having found a local Antiques Anonymous chapter.However, sponsors are scarce. As you know,
it’s not easy to find someone disciplined enough to give up collecting.
Nevertheless, I persevered, and eventually located Tom, a recovering Mouli
Grater collector who was willing to be my sponsor. The next Saturday morning
Tom and I found ourselves climbing over the back wall at the local swap meet to
get an early peek at the goodies. Flashlight in hand, he quickly located a pair
of stunning green handled slotted spoons.

"Well, that
doesn't surprise me; the jerk kept them both for himself". I shuffled away
angrily. Antiques Anonymous is a friggin' racquet. My relationship with my
sponsor was certainly over, however, later in the morning I happened upon a
mint condition Fisher Beer church key, and started feeling a little better. And,
as it turns out, the trip to the swap meet wasn't a total loss.While I was there, I signed up for my own
permanent stall. Now I can shop early during setup every Saturday. That's how you
get the good stuff you know.

Life is pretty
sweet now. The collection is coming along just fine, and the wife even allows
me to occasionally visit the cast iron beater collection that she took with her
when she left. She even asked once about a date, but when I started looking on
a handle for a patient number, she just shrugged and left the room. Que Será, Será". Still, life has
its moments. As a matter of fact, last Saturday at the flea market I picked up
a nice 1940’s cast iron ricer for only four bucks.Suckers, these guys don’t even know what
they’ve got.

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About Me

I've spent 25 years in the antiques business, as a shop owner, show dealer and collector. I currently own & publish the New Century Collector, "the" source for information about the Utah antiques scene.